


Deluge

by electricskeptic



Category: Supernatural
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-15
Updated: 2011-09-15
Packaged: 2017-11-09 15:24:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/457007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/electricskeptic/pseuds/electricskeptic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She has picked up all manner of radical habits from Castiel.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Deluge

Time finds them in a wide, open field in the middle of Oklahoma, the first place they touched down. The plan had been to discuss strategy, battle tactics, but it’s raining -- _hard_ \-- and Rachel finds it… distracting.

Up until a year ago, she had never taken a human vessel and come down to earth before; it had never been required of her. As such, she still finds the sheer scope of physical sensation available to her in this body on occasion overwhelming. She has felt rain before, but never like this. It’s a deluge, the kind that has her clothes clinging to every curve and crease of skin, water falling from the ends of her hair and snaking in rivulets under her collar, down the back of her neck. She spreads her arms wide, palms tilted up to the sky to catch more. A laugh bubbles up out of her throat, a musical-sounding note that escapes entirely without her sanction.

“It’s incredible.”

“Yes,” Castiel agrees, so quietly that he might not have spoken at all. He’s standing close enough that she can feel the strange heat of him, hair lying in sodden clumps against his forehead, white shirt soaked to transparency. He watches her, but not with the eyes of a mentor, a general; his expression softer than she remembers seeing it before. She thinks he might be smiling, but it’s always so, so difficult to tell. His wings arch high above his head, swords of pure light, splitting the raindrops that fall upon them into bright prisms of color.

He is beautiful, and strong, but an endlessly peculiar thing; an angel who wears his empty human skin as though it belongs to him, more comfortable on earth than in his true place in Heaven. He is an aberration, a strange, displaced hybrid who doesn’t really _fit_ anywhere. Most of their brethren despise him, and the rest hold him in a kind of fearful respect he doesn’t seem to know what to do with.

Rachel has been a soldier since long before the first creatures of earth climbed out of the primordial soup, and she knows that they are losing the war. They can evade Raphael for a time, fight the small battles and put up a good defence, but they will never be a match for the third archangel in terms of power or reputation, and they are losing ground, losing numbers by the day. She knows the toll it takes on Castiel, that it makes him frustrated and angry and lonely and desperately afraid. Though she doesn’t like to think about it, she knows that he is losing him, that he is losing himself; that he is molding himself into something sharpened and dangerous, a living weapon stripped of the empathy and compassion that gives him reason to fight in the first place.

But in this moment, in this field in Oklahoma in the rain, it’s as though a burden has been lifted from his shoulders, a great, crushing weight that’s had him grounded as surely as if his wings were clipped. He looks fond, wistful, almost happy, and Rachel finds that she wants to make him look that way all the time.

And, oh, but it is still such a strange and foreign thing, to _want_. She has picked up all manner of radical habits from Castiel.

“Is this one of the reasons?” She asks, because she would fight to her death for this world if he asked it of her, but sometimes she still has difficulty understanding _why_ it is so important. The callousness and cruelty of humankind is inescapable, and so far she has found it on every corner of the globe. Only a few weeks previously, in New York City, she witnessed a man shoot a young girl in the back of the head and drive away laughing; no reason for it that she could discern. So occasionally, when in one of his more forthcoming moods, Castiel will educate her in the ways of this little planet -- insignificant, when the whole of Creation is considered -- in the hopes that she will better understand his motivations for defending it so ferociously.

He has introduced her to cheeseburgers and fries and the sharp sting of alcohol that burned the back of her throat, the last spill of a sunset as it disappears below the horizon, but his favorite reasons by far all seem to center around one man. He has told her at great length about Dean Winchester’s laugh, eyes, voice, body, soul, his kindness and selflessness and compassion, as well as his obstinacy and bull-headed stubbornness. Rachel doesn’t much care for the envious twist of her insides every time Castiel speaks of his crass, obnoxious human with such reverence.

“Rain is hardly a valid reason for fighting a war,” he answers her now, and his tone is gently chiding. As though he is aware of how very much he still has left to teach her, and fears there will not be time left in the universe. With the prices on both of their heads, he may well be right. “Other things are… more important.”

“Such as?”

Castiel seems to hesitate briefly; then his hand is sliding in the sheen of moisture that covers the side of her face and he’s leaning down towards her until his lips brush against her own.

_Oh,_ she thinks wildly, _kissing,_ because she’s seen humans do precisely this before, thousands upon thousands of times. She never imagined it could feel like _this,_ though; something tight and shivery in the base of her stomach, all the air in her lungs seeming to expand and fill her until she feels lightheaded and disoriented. She throws down arms, surrenders herself completely to the push of Castiel’s mouth against her own. His tongue traces her bottom lip enticingly and she lets him in, helpless to do anything but _submit_. She tastes rainwater running between their open mouths, sweet and fresh and clean.

She wonders if the Winchester boy taught him this or if it was somebody else; some warm, soft human shape that provided him with comfort and shelter during his year in exile. She resents them -- whoever they are -- for knowing Castiel is ways that she cannot, will never, when her lifetime with him has spanned millennia and they are nothing but mortal flesh.

Castiel remains close when they separate, forehead resting against her temple. She experiences an odd new sensation somewhere in the vicinity of her chest when she realizes that she can count the individual droplets clinging to his eyelashes, an erratic fluttering of her borrowed heart that falls outside the beat of its usual rhythm.

“There’s that,” he says, quiet.

_I understand now,_ she wants to tell him, _why you Fell, why you fight and fight for humanity with no hope of peace at the end of it._

She holds the words inside, unsure of whether they will incite gratitude or contempt. He is unpredictable at the best of times, liable to turn cold and remote without notice. Even now, he is distant, forever holding her at arms’ length. In many ways, he is still an enigma to her, and she doesn’t pretend to know the inner workings of his mind, his most closely-guarded wishes and desires and regrets. He is paranoid and suspicious of other angels -- their own brothers and sisters -- in a way that makes her quietly ache, but in spite of everything she is his most trusted lieutenant, and the knowledge fills her with a fierce kind of pride.

Standing on the edge of the Apocalypse for the second time in as many years, it is enough.

Castiel pulls away, withdrawing both physically and in spirit, his face darkening with the sky as thunder rolls along the horizon. Half a world away, she can hear battle-cries and death-knells, the clash of Heaven-forged steel as the fighting resumes.

It never stops, and sometimes she wonders if it ever will. She remembers with perfect clarity the moment Castiel returned to Heaven following his second resurrection by the hand of God, full of optimism and hope for a new world order, a _better way_. She marvels at how they got here, war-torn and battle-weary, every last shred of innocence peeled away until they are nothing more than the weapons they carry and their intent to kill.

“We should return,” Castiel says, and whatever softness his voice had carried before has been replaced by the jaded hopelessness she is more used to hearing there.

“Yes, General,” she defers, recognizing the shift in tone and knowing that whatever might have taken place here is history. Castiel looks vaguely uncomfortable for a moment, but says nothing.

Rachel pauses to take stock of the field, the water breaking on her face. She knows that they will not be back here, and she thinks it is her favorite place.

Then, as one, they spread their wings and take flight.


End file.
